Metallica, the largest opponents to online distribution, decided to no longer let the dollars slip away

Veteran band Metallica, one of the first music artists to take offense to the original peer-to-peer file sharing program Napster, has decided to offer their music for sale on the Apple iTunes music download service. Although the band has had entire albums available via the Internet for years, this is the first time where individual tracks can be downloaded. Starting on Tuesday, the band put up its entire backlog of 10 albums on iTunes. Metallica also made several unreleased tracks available for their first four albums. Due to Metallica's record company overseas not wanting to "play ball," songs can only be offered on iTunes in the U.S. and Canada. According to a press release on Metallica's web site:

Over the last year or so, we have seen an ever-growing number of Metallica fans using online sites like iTunes to get their music. So, in continuing with the tradition of offering our albums for sale online (which we've been doing for a few years through various sites), as well as making our live concerts available for download in their entirety (through the livemetallica.com site), we are now offering fans the opportunity to obtain our songs individually.

Metallica didn't want to offer individual songs on iTunes after the program's launch in 2003, because the band didn't want to "contribute to the demise of the album format." The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, along with Radiohead are just a few examples of bands that are currently have declined the option of having content on iTunes.

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This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

Like masher2 said earlier. They objected people pirating their songs. I believe they are entitled to hold on the their rights for songs and albums they have created as their living? Now they are selling them to genuine buyers.